Dave’s Insanity Sauce Scoville Ratings

Dave’s Insanity Sauces Scoville Ratings

A growing interest in extreme hot sauces in particular can be dated roughly from the institution of the annual Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show in 1989. The original Dave’s Insanity Sauce premiered around 1993 and was one of the first sauces to be made directly from capsaicin extract, allowing it to be hotter than the hottest habanero-pepper sauces of the day. It was the only hot sauce ever banned from the National Fiery Foods Show for being too hot. It has been rated at 180,000 Scoville units, compared with 2,500-5,000 for Tabasco sauce, which, before the 1990s, was the hottest sauce known to the average consumer. Part of the intrigue behind the sauce name (Insanity) was founder Dave Hirschkop’s wearing of a straitjacket at events promoting his products.

The introduction of sauces made from capsaicin extract started an arms race. Dave’s Gourmet has since introduced sauces with increasingly greater concentrations of capsaicin under names such as Dave’s Temporary Insanity Sauce, Dave’s Total Insanity Sauce, and Dave’s Ultimate Insanity Sauce, which range from 48,000 to 700,000 on the Scoville scale as you can see from the chart below. These sauces come complete with a caveats such as “Use this product one drop at a time.” ” Keep away from eyes, children and pets.” “Not for people with heart or respiratory problems.” Dave’s Ghost Pepper Sauce is the latest in the line of insanely hot sauces.